Moorten Botanical Gardens- Palm Springs

 
Inside the Moorten Botanical Gardens. Photo by Myriam Mahiques, personal archives, 2023

I've been in Palm Springs, California, many times, most of all for business, and this weekend I decided to finally visit the Moorten Botanical Gardens, which at first I thought they would be like a big regional Arboretum, but no, the gardens are a private collection of cactus and succulents.

From the Gardens web page: 

"Moorten Botanical Garden possesses an equally colorful history. It was created by Clark’s parents, Chester “Cactus Slim” Moorten and his wife, Patricia. Cactus Slim was an original Keystone Cop and a stand-in for Howard Hughes. He developed tuberculosis on a film set and recovered in Cottonwood Springs, near Joshua Tree, where he panned for gold and collected beautiful cactuses. He learned mining was hard work and selling prickly plants paid better. In search of more customers, Chester came to Palm Springs in 1938, met Patricia, who also had an interest in succulents, and they bought the property, which became Moorten Botanical Garden, from renowned nature and desert photographer Stephen Willard."

The story goes on that they developed a business designing gardens for famous CA people, but you can tell that these gardens in Palm Springs are not the work of landscape architects, but of "aficionados" who love succulents and cactus. 

It may take half an hour to walk around the trails, unless you take your time taking pictures and reading the labels. Not all plans are labeled and overall, I found the gardens beautiful.

Inside the Green House of the Moorten Botanical Gardens

But it dawned on me the precariousness of the site, which I was not expecting. The Green House is build with plastic sheets, the air conditioning looked very old and (maybe) out of work. There are lots of plastic cactus pots inside, those who love plants know very well how bad plastic is to ventilate the roots. This is not the arrangement based on pattern, species or design, I had the feeling of seeing plants just added here and there. The "walkway" is pretty narrow, at the point that I came across a lady who trying to dodge me, was accidentally pricked by one of the cactuses.

The Green House had one of the two entrances blocked, which is not a good idea in case of eventual fire or earthquake. 

The following pictures belong to my personal archives, they have been taken yesterday, January 7th 2023, please do not share without my permission.

The scale of the cactus is really amazing and I truly enjoyed the trails.

The ticket is $5 per adult. There is a sort of "shop" at the entrance and I bought two gifts, one for my daughter, the other for myself.

I think this outdoor armchair carved from a trunk is a real (most interesting) finding.

The Moorten Gardens point of sale.

As a side note, the web page states that some days they have 200 visitors. Besides, it is advertising weddings, and events, charging more than 1,000$. The site was not crowded but I can tell there is elder people most of all. 

After this visit, I had to go to a construction job site and then go back home. I thought it would be a good idea to go to the restroom before leaving. And here it was my main surprise, the bathroom is NOT accessible and I believe it does not have a Building and Safety permit at all. Being it so precarious, just like a siding box with no structural framing for the roof, no structural connections to the stucco walls behind, no accessible path (the path leading to it is very steep), my disgust was such, that I decided not to enter. A chemical bathroom at the construction site would be better.

I do not know if there is another bathroom facility but I had no indication otherwise. See that even the sink, the paper, the stuff around, all of it looks precarious and like abandoned. If this business is advertised for weddings, etc, for 200 people, there is no way this "white sort of storage" in my picture below, will suffice for the public and never for the purposes of safety, which is one of my main concerns. 

I hope this will be fixed in time, as it is a black stain in the gardens beauty. 

The bathroom of the Moorten Botanical Gardens is the white precarious construction in the middle. Supposedly "attached" to the house.